Choices. The first major project we work on this year is going to be about human emotion and the choices that artists get to make. Human emotion drives all art forms - music, dance, film, visual arts, theater, sculpture - whatever the art, human emotion lies at the heart of its creation.

Through this project you're going to learn some technical skills - we'll be breaking into small 20 minute boot camps periodically on how to accomplish a number of manipulative skills and some methods for approaching the creative process. Both Mr. Tucker and Mr. Hicks want to see what you already know, and what you can do in the next two to three weeks to create an original product.

Teams. Your first choice is how are you going to work - what media are you going to use and how are you going to work? Independently or with a team of creators. Your finished project can be a film, an animation, a slideshow, fine art presentation, or any other kind of multimedia product that you can imagine. That is a wide window of opportunity. We'll be discussing what talents and skills are needed to produce a short film, an animation or a slideshow. When I was a student, I hated group projects because all too often the real work got dumped on a few dedicated individuals. That won't happen here - you will have the ability to fire any non-productive team members and those folks will have to create their project independently.

The theme. This project needs to represent any single or combination of human emotions (see list below for ideas or come up with your own.) What you need to keep in mind is the idea of crafting a small finished product really well! This has no time requirement, but should tell a brief story.

Yearbook Work: This week is an important week. We need to complete last minute details, package all finished pages, and upload the finished packages to Tuckers Resources>2015 Shield Files>DONE PAGES folder. We will be checking on Thursday and Friday to make sure all files are present. During spring break I will be compiling the finished book and ALL FILES have to be there for that work to proceed so we make deadline.

Perspective Cropping: Last week we took a picture for senior standouts that was slightly out of perspective - the image included a frame around a portrait of Matt and Luna. We will be working with this image to understand how later versions of Photoshop allow us to fix the perspective so we get the image that we need. Download this image to complete this lesson.

Project Choices for the Coming Weeks: Once your yearbook responsibilities are complete, you have a number of options for project work. We will be working on these three projects over the next three weeks. All students will be required to complete at least two of these projects by April 17th. All three should be really fun to work on and they will be a welcomed break from yearbook pressures and NOCTI testing.

Agamograph Project: This project should prove to be a real challenge, but you will love the finished product. I'm sure you've never created anything quite like this before. You will be creating a style of visual art that was conceived by the Israeli artist, Yaacov Agam. To learn about his life's work, watch this video below:

It's difficult to show Agam's work statically in a still photograph - the work requires movement on the part of the viewer. The term for this is kinetic sculpture. Below is a video that simulates that movement:

Below is a how-to video on creating an agamograph like the one show above:

Some tips for approaching this project:

Our finished working size for this will be 8" x 16" with 1" panels. That means that your drawings or images must fit an 8" x 8" area. You will end up with 16 panels that will hold both of your images.

This can be doneanalog (totally hand-done in any media) and then glued to your folded sheet. This would allow you to work on a larger piece if you wish.

To complete this in Photoshop you will need to know how to set up a grid, resize your image to 8x8, and how to make consistent 1" x 8" marquis selections.

Be creative with this. Contrast two things and don't be afraid to take risks.

Yearbook Project - PortraitsA small number of Commercial Art students have been taking student portraits over the past month and a half. Now it's time to get all of us in the program to finish this part of our yearbook. You will be learning how photographers finish a portrait off by correcting and calibrating the following details:

This is going to require you to concentrate on our goals. Every student has a group of photos that you will be required to work on and finish. These images will be on an external drive on my desk. You will need to copy these files to your computer in order to get started. The due date for this work is November 26. We need to meet this deadline and no time extensions will be given on this project.

Go Red for Women T-shirt DesignWe have been asked to do a community service project for Phoenixville Hospital's celebration of the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign.Kathleen Clarke, a cardiac nurse at the hospital, describes what they are looking for below:

We are looking at having a contest to design the American Heart Association Campaign GO RED for Women. We were hoping that the students might help us design the t-shirt that we sell to fundraise for the campaign. My initial thoughts are that you all could do something internally to narrow down to 3-5 designs, and then we could have a vote here, giving a small award to the top 3. We have in the past just used the Go Red portion rather than including the “for women” to make it more inclusive of the entire population.WE are looking for a single color print on a red t-shirt. (multiple colors in the print tend to cost too much!) The Phoenixville Hospital logo would need to be on the left chest. Other than that, they could design front, back, both etc.

The Phoenixville Hospital logo will appear on the left front in the pocket position. What we will be designing is the back of the shirt. Your designs should fit into a letter size space (either landscape or portrait orientation.) You might want to do a little research before beginning to create your design. The event is taking place in February of 2014 and might include a heart icon as a start. Here is the link to the national organization's event website. I would like to see idea thumbnails in pencil completed by Tuesday afternoon and a finished one-color design by next Friday. All work should be completed in Adobe Illustrator.The winning design will earn an additional t-shirt project in our lab during this school year. I want to see what everyone can do with this as this is great practice for our upcoming SkillsUSA competition in early December.

Per the request of several students, we are going to revisit a project we did in the fall of 2012. You are going to be creating an accordian text book. This project could possibly use both Photoshop and Illustrator. Below are the objectives for this project:

Students plan page layouts using Illustrator with a minimum of 6 pages. The page size will be 5" x 5". The finished layout size will be 5" x 10" with a .125" bleed.

Students choose a song lyric, poem, quote, or make up their own phrase to be the subject of their book. The phrase must be appropriate.

Students learn what an accordion book is and how to construct one.

Students follow the design process through by planning, executing, printing, and making/constructing their final product-a hand-bound type book.

Students use creative thinking and problem solving to illustrate their phrase through the use of font choices and text manipulation with Illustrator and Photoshop.

Students learn some basic elements of design, including composition, balance, concept and message, and the principle of unequal spacing.

This week we will continue to focus on Photoshop basic skills through a major project we'll be using to decorate our room. On Friday, Sean asked me if we could do an Andy Warhol style portrait. Warhol was the father of pop art and he was famous for this style of serigraph (screen printing). Warhol's portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy and other famous people in the 60s were some of his most popular work. It is important to remember that these portraits were done in an age before Photoshop and Warhol hand cut the color separations for his work.

Photoshop makes creating this style much easier. The Photoshop skills necessary to alter a photograph into this style are as follows:

Cropping an image

Duplicating Layers

Changing Image Modes (Grayscale, RGB)

Using Levels Adjustments

Creating Layer Masks

Making and Inverting Selections

Using Hue/Saturation Adjustments to create variations of the basic theme.

Below is a video tutorial that we'll be using to learn this technique. We can all create one of Marilyn Monroe. You can download the same image being used in the video by clicking on this link. After you've worked through the technique with Marilyn, I'd like you to create a self-portrait study using either a photo you already have or one taken in our lab. We'll be printing these out for a Welcome to CommArt bulletin board section.

One aspect of working in Photoshop that you will learn is that there are multiple ways of solving a problem. Below is another way to create a similar style. Both ways work, if done carefully.

Why are we here?

Welcome to the 2013-2014 School year at TCHS Pickering! I'm glad to be back working to help you reach your career goals. I'm looking forward to getting to know our new students and growing the potential of all of our students to do great things. I appreciate your feedback - so although this weekly communication will explain what we do every week in our class in my words, this is your forum as well. If you have ideas or suggestions, feel free to comment on these posts every week. You are the reason we're here and you matter the most!

What's New?

We've added some new technology over the summer:

Two new Canon T4i cameras for basic photography skills,

One T3i with external microphone for video shooting,

a shooting base for product and still-frame animation,

two cabled remote shooting devices

two different ring lights for portrait & product photography

lens covers for all of our kit lenses,

a mat cutter for framing finished artwork & photography,

scratch art work packs,

acrylic paints for mural and other painting projects

In addition to new equipment, we're happy to announce that our school is becoming an Adobe Certified Associate testing center. This will allow you to earn industry certifications in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Download and read the files below for a

The completed project is an 11 x 17 poster compiled in InDesign but we’ll be creating graphics for the poster in Illustrator and Photoshop as well taking photographs for the finished poster. The following components must be present in the finished design: Day 1 & 2 (Color Wheel Photos):

Create a new folder called Color Wheel Poster to your desktop. All of your files should be saved into this folder.

Open the file in Adobe Illustrator. Understand what is occurring on each of the two layers in Illustrator. We will be dropping in photographs into the grid in Adobe Photoshop using selections and paste into function. The Illustrator file will be functioning as a smart object in Photoshop so that we can continue to edit the file in Illustrator when we need to do so.

Create a new Photoshop file, 11 in. x 11 in., 200 ppi, RGB.

Copy and Paste only the grid from illustrator. Paste as a smart object when asked.

Use either the magic wand tool or quick selection tool to select a color section. Use copy>paste into to paste the needed color image into the grid. Repeat until you’re pleased with the result. It might be a smart to use a theme for this color wheel – organic items v. man-made items. Try to be creative with this component.

Day 3 & 4: Color Acquity Test/Psychology of Color

Our annual Who Sees Color Best Competition will be held on these days – we’ll be using this web site for this competition:

Below is a video that demonstrates how to use the background eraser on green screen photographs. Try to get even lighting on your green screen photos - eliminate as many shadows as possible.Download this file to practice the technique.